A car accident made this graphic designer more grounded, and take to farming, tending to vegetables on a piece of land far from Johannesburg.
About 250kms from the sanitized suburbs of Sandton in South Africa’s Gauteng province is Randfontein, a rugged gold mining city in the West Rand, where we meet 31-year-old Katlego Pitse on his farm where he is currently producing rows of crisp green lettuce.
A few years ago, the Soweto-born farmer was far from any piece of earth, and closer to a computer desktop, earning a living as a graphic designer.
The only definition he gave himself was as a ‘creative’.
“Straight after high school, I studied graphic design from 2008 until 2012. From there on, I pursued a career in commercial arts. Advertising is the number one industry that absorbs creatives,” says Pitse of his ‘other job’.
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He worked for various companies in Johannesburg and his career was well on to greener pastures as he enjoyed a hefty salary with annual increments and a lavish lifestyle, until an unfortunate incident threw him out of gear. Pitse was involved in a road accident in 2015 and the snazzy, pricey car he had been spending so much on, had to be written off. The accident was a facilitator, as he was faced with some life-defining choices, and the prospect of a new direction, one that made him more grounded.
“I had to start over. This was the kind of catalyst that gave me a bit of a wakeup call; going forward, [I realized] if I was to spend money, it had to be on valuable assets that are going to yield returns that can be passed on,” he says.
He left a full-time job to freelance at a night club; this is where he was exposed to the day-to-day operations of a business. It helped him take to entrepreneurship, pursuing agriculture full-time; which had been a burning desire since his days as an art student thumbing through agriculture magazines.
“I was constantly doing research. It was something I knew I wanted to do but I wasn’t sure when I was going to be able to pursue it fully because you need an actual career,” he says.
“There was an article I read about a farmer based in Winterveld. I called to ask if I could visit to see his operation in 2015. Just that farm visit was an inspiration to start my business.”
Pitse saved up enough money to buy a vacant two-and-half hectare plot in Randfontein for R200,000 ($13,400). It took him three years to start production, during which time he pursued his graphic design career on the side.
In 2019, the first year of production, Pitse focused on cucumbers – his pet passion – and did cycles of long English cucumbers. Due to the high costs, Pitse had to re-evaluate and decided to move to a less cumbersome crop, lettuce.
Pitse is currently employing two family members and still does the odd graphic design job to supplement his income.
Surely, a small-scale farmer with big graphic dreams of the future.
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